Paleoconservative Observations

Clinton’s Lack of Skill

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is in disarray, and she is about to lose for one reason: the product. She’s unpopular, crude, uninteresting, fake, and awkward. No technical campaigning skills by her handlers and managers can change that. Jonathan Chait breaks it down:

Republicans have long had a kind of black-magic fear of the Clintons’ political potency. From the right’s perspective, Bill Clinton won the presidency at a time when the GOP thought it had an electoral college lock. Then he beat back the Republican revolution and the party’s efforts to defeat him.

The reality is less dramatic. Bill Clinton defeated a recession-weakened president with some help from a third-party spoiler, stopped the GOP from cutting highly popular social programs, won reelection during an economic boom and rallied his own party to thwart a wildly partisan impeachment crusade. None of these triumphs required unusual political skill.

Hillary Clinton has tried to piggyback on her husband’s ferocious reputation, boasting that she “beat the Republican attack machine.” Of course, if anybody beat the Republican attack machine, it was Bill. Hillary Clinton wasn’t on any ballot in the 1990s. True, her reputation was at stake, but that’s a fight she lost: She ended that decade a highly unpopular figure. She remains one today, with about half of the public persistently telling pollsters they have an unfavorable view of her.

Obama also is something new, or, rather, something forgotten: a capable politician with good political skills. We’re so used to boring, wonky, and dry politicians that are bad speakers and also socially awkward that we have forgotten his style was once ubiquitous. No one 50 or 100 years ago would have mistaken his political and social skills, devoid of any serious policy content, as something to get too excited over. But ours is a very decadent age!